


Last Of His Kind

by C130



Category: Cars (Pixar Movies), Planes (Movies)
Genre: Changing of the Guard, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Moving On
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-26
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:03:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,260
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29558832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/C130/pseuds/C130
Summary: With Cabbie it had always been a when, not an if...but just because you knew death was inevitable didn't make the process of saying goodbye any easier.
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13





	1. Prologue: A Quiet Night On Base

**Author's Note:**

> As any of my long term readers know, I have indirectly (and in some cases not so indirectly) written about the events contained in this story in some of my other pieces. Several of you have specifically mentioned that it made you want to read the whole story, so I have been slowly picking away at it as my writing mood and muse allowed. Now all of the key pieces are in place and Mother Nature has landed me on bedrest for a week or two, so I will embark on the task of sticking it all together and presenting it to you.
> 
> Dedication: To Grandpa...COVID-19 took away the chance to give a proper goodbye, but I hope that you have blue skies and that your squadron saved your place in the formation.

The beans were a bit on the burnt side, but Cabbie seemed to be a bit more distracted than normal and neither Maru or Blade could have made anything better so neither vehicle had room to complain. The mechanic assumed that Cabbie’s mild absent mindedness was due to laundry list of weather reports that he was listening to over the radio. There was a snowstorm coming, and as the park’s primary avalanche abatement vehicle, the C-119 always did his best to stay on top of the latest info…even if it made him a less than desirable dining companion.

“Big storm?” Maru asked as he eyed the barrel of purple fuel that Cabbie pulled out after the meal had been consumed and the table had been cleared.

The big plane just shrugged. “Just was in the mood for it.”

That peaked Maru’s interest a bit. Purple fuel was the highest grade of Avgas on the market, and while Cabbie engines were big enough that he should technically be running on it all of the time, it was also as expensive as slag, so the old plane usually did without. That said, Lift, one of Cabbie’s closest friends had sent the plane a couple of barrels of the good stuff and Avgas did have a limited shelf life, so there was not any reason that Cabbie should indulge when the hankering hit him. Still, Maru could help but feel like something might be a little bit off...Then he put his tine on it.

“Wait one moment.” Maru ducked out of the Cabbie’s hanger and made a bee line across cold tarmac to the maintenance hangar. Rummaging around in the spare parts, he was able to locate what he was looking for…a nice can of high grade that was well within Cabbie’s consumption specs. Rolling back into the hanger, Maru placed the high grade in front of Cabbie and gave a properly smug smile. “Now this image is complete.”

Cabbie looked at the high grade with a bit of amusement, then glanced over at Blade. The helicopter simply gave a shrug of his rotors. “Go ahead and drink it. We both know that if you don’t Maru will never let us hear the end of it and we also both know that that isn’t enough high grade to get you even mildly buzzed.”

“You know he is right.” Maru grinned between taking swings of oil from his own mug. “And honestly, it is medicinal. Purple gas is powerful enough that it would but some extra strain on your engines if you didn’t properly lubricate them beforehand.”

At that Cabbie stopped arguing and instead focused on coercing Blade into a friendly game of chess…which despite Cabbie’s earlier apparent distraction he successfully trounced the helicopter three games in a row. Finally, the Chief finally got tired of the loosing streak and excused himself from the board. Cabbie then tried to convince Maru to take him on, but the mechanic knew the limits of his skill and also declined.

With that the evening was over. Cabbie ushered Maru and Blade out so that the old plane could get the sleep he would need to be properly rested to complete his work avalanche abatement work the following morning. Blade left with a polite good night, but Maru insisted on ribing him good naturally that a plane as ugly as Cabbie needed as much beauty sleep as he could get to make sure he was presentable in public. Then Maru closed Cabbie's hanger door and rolled up the hill to Blade’s hanger where the two vehicles ended up talking long into the night.

What Maru didn’t realize then, is he would always regret not taking Cabbie up on a round of chess or staying just a little bit longer, because that quiet night on base would be the last time that anyone saw Cabbie McHale alive.


	2. Chapter 1 - Gone

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maru and Blade struggle to get traction in more than one way.

Falling snow didn’t so much have a sound, as it did a lack of it. Over the long years that Maru had called Piston Peaks home he had grown to recognize the muffled quiet that came whenever a storm brought big fluffy snowflakes that fluttered their way to earth. He had grown to love that lack of sound, that naturally cocoon that shut out the rest of the world.

For some reason Maru desperately wanted this moment of stillness to stretch into an eternity…but based on the slat of the light coming through the windows in Blade’s hanger, the mechanic had already slept longer than he intended. He usually woke to the thunder of Cabbie’s engines echoing across the landscape as the old plane warmed up for his morning Avalanche patrol, but a combination of the late-night talking with Blade and the muffling effect of the snow must have caused Maru to completely sleep through the plane’s departure.

Yawning, Maru stretched and shook the last of the sleep from his frame. He needed to get himself into gear because there were still so many tasks to get done on winter days like this and a limited amount of sunlight to do them in. Cabbie always handled plowing the main runways and the apron, but that left the rest of the necessary snow removal for Maru…because Blade, like pretty much all helicopters, was absolutely useless in this type of weather. But before any snow was going to get moved, Maru was going to need to get himself at least one mug of coffee.

Sliding the door open he blinked the spots away as the light from both the sun filtering through the last of the storm clouds and the light that was dancing across the expanse of snow…the completely unbroken, expanse of snow…and Maru had to swallow hard to keep breathing through the growing sense of dread because it was clear that the runway hadn’t been plowed since he had gone to bed the night before.

Maru’s voice caught in his throat, but he still activated his radio. “Cabbie, you okay?”

He listened with a hope that Cabbie’s hangar door had been frozen shut, or the big bird had woken up with a migraine, or any other simple little thing that might have thrown a wrench into the cogs that powered the base. He listened but the only thing that greeted his ears was static.

The mechanic’s feeling of dread only deepened as he fought his way through drifts of snow, slipping on the ice that was hidden underneath the powder. After an exhausting slog, Maru was in front of Cabbie’s hanger. With a shaking tine, he pulled slid open the hanger door, and looked into the darkness within. The moment that Maru’s eyes adjusted enough to clearly see Cabbie where he sat in the middle of his hanger, he knew that the old plane was gone. He had never seen this particular phenomenon in person before, but he had heard it described more than once in his university classes and the C-119 in front of him was a textbook example. 

The plane was sitting on his belly on the floor of the hanger with his landing gear fully tucked up inside of him and his flaps trimmed as though he was in level flight. No one knew why planes who died on the ground in their sleep were always found in this position, though one of his professors had speculated it might be a physical manifestation of an aircraft’s final dream of taking to the air. As Maru let his eyes pass across the still form of his friend, he hoped that speculation was true. If any aircraft deserved to glide peacefully into the great beyond it was a plane who had as hard of a life as Cabbie’s.

Gingerly, Maru rolled into the cavernous space and as he did, he realized just how crushingly silent it was. Gone were the quiet whirl of fans and the hum of electronics. Gone were the faint hiss of pumps and the whisper of breath. Replacing it was a heartbreaking quiet that could only be produced when Maru had utterly failed. Replacing it was the silence of an engine that would never run again.

Reaching his forward, the mechanic gently stroked the familiar metal plates with his tine. It was cold, still, and completely devoid of the life that had vibrated with only hours ago. With careful movements, he found himself tracing familiar wield lines, familiar seams, aspects of a body that Maru had worked on for so many years that he now knew it as well as his own tine.

“Oh Cabbie.” Maru finally managed to choke out of his heavy, aching throat. “I am so sorry that I failed you.”

The little tug allowed himself to cast his eyes to the ground and take a moment to allow the full magnitude of his grief to wash over him for a few timeless moments…then he pushed his grief back into the mental box he always kept on hand for emergencies. There was much work to be done, and Maru didn’t have time to allow himself to completely be buried by his emotions until that work was completed.

He slowly, deliberately, rolled to the hanger door before glancing back at the mortal frame that had once housed one of his closest friends.

“I am sorry to leave you like this…but Cabbie you know as well as any of us how short-staffed we are at this time of year. It is going to be a rough couple of hours, possibly days, but I promise you…” Maru swallowed hard to allow him to whisper out the last of his words. “I promise you that Blade and I will see you through this last journey.”

Then he closed the door, took another deep breath. It felt deeply wrong to leave Cabbie alone like that. Tradition stated that they should set up a deathwatch until the old plane could undergo his breaking, and while Maru didn’t really believe in ghosts, he deeply believed in the importance of respecting the dead. To leave Cabbie’s shell in that cold, dark hanger nearly caused all the emotions that he had stuffed into his mental box to burst forth with a vengeance…but this was not the first death that Maru had had the misfortunate to attend to, so he swallowed his hurt, and followed his tracks back up to the hill to Blade’s hanger. 

“Blade, we have an emergency.” Maru called out as loud as he could as soon as he slid the helicopter’s hanger door open, but the mechanic only managed to choke out the words with a volume that was barely above a whisper. Still, the tone of the words was enough to pull Blade from the depths of his slumber.

“What?” The helicopter muttered as he attempted to blink the sleep from his eyes.

“We have an emergency…Cabbie’s gone?” Maru saw the confusion in his best friend’s eyes and realized that he had to speak more clearly. “Blade, Cabbie’s dead.”

This instantly catapulted Blade into a fully awake state. Blade squeezed his eyes shut and Maru knew that he was listening for an ELT, but the mechanic knew that no emergency locator transmitter had sounded. Cabbie had slipped from the world too peacefully and quietly for the ELT to announce his death to the world.

Maru tried to swallow his pain enough to allow himself to speak. “He didn’t crash. I found him in his hanger this morning…from the looks of it he passed sometime in the night…”

“How?” Blade gave the mechanic a level look that made his desperation for answers clear.

“I don’t know…” The mechanic’s words trailed off, then he leveled a steady gaze at his Chief. “We probably will not find the answer until the breaking is completed, but before we can seek answers there is so much that we need to get done.”

Blade got a deeply contemplative expression on his face, then he gave Maru a soft bump on the side. “I will get on the horn with the Superintendent if you will get in contact with the authorities. Then we probably should probably start digging out the base in preparation for visitors.”

* * *

Digging out base proved to be a welcome relief. It had taken Maru over three hours to call all of the relevant authorities and in between those outbound calls he kept on getting incoming calls from the different nets that Cabbie participated trying to check up on the plane and find out why he failed to report the local weather conditions or update the park’s avalanche situation. It made Maru truly dread the sound of the phone ringing because it meant he was once again going to have to inform another organization that Cabbie wasn’t going to be participating in their radio net ever again. It was a painful enough process, that Maru wished that he could just shot the information to the mountain tops to make it stop…but as the base mechanic, he felt it was his duty to keep everyone informed, so he continued to answer the phone.

At least he did until all the authorities that needed to be notified were notified and then Maru fled to the chill of the base’s tarmac to help Blade with the with the frame breaking work of clearing enough snow to allow a coroner and Cabbie’s family to fly in. As expected, even though it was now early afternoon, Blade hadn’t made much progress clearing the snow so Maru was easily able to pick a corner of the runway far enough away from the helicopter to prevent the possibility of conversation.

The mechanic used this opportunity to allow his dark mood to swallow him as he worked mechanically to finish the task at hand. Maru allowed himself to get so absorbed in his task that he didn’t even process that Blade was talking softly over one of the park’s radio frequencies. It was only when he heard a soft rumbling coming up the Piston Peak Air Attack Base’s access road, did Maru realize that the cavalry had arrived.

At this time of year, it was a challenge to keep the park’s main access roads clear of snow and the major trails groomed for visitor access. Minor roads, such as the base access road, were usually allowed to infill with snow which made those roads impassable. This was normally not a problem because the base was well stocked with winter supplies and Cabbie had been more than capable of keeping the tarmac cleared which allowed them an air route to pick up anything they might have forgotten. But with Cabbie gone, the task of clearing the base of snow was beyond Maru and Blades's ability.

Maru had to blink away some tears as he saw Buzz Iceclear, one of the county’s big snowplows, rolled onto base. Following him was a couple of park rangers, all sporting push blades. The snow clearers took a moment to give Maru and Blade their condolences, before ushering the two vehicles into Blade’s hanger to warm up. Then the vehicles got to work, bending their blades to the work of clearing the snow and ice enough to allow the Piston Peak Air Attack Base to successfully land aircraft once more.

* * *

Once the snow was removed, the rangers went back to work and the plow heading back to clear county roads. The base lapsed into silence as Maru and Blade waited for the coroner to arrive plane from San Francisco and formally file the death certificate…but somehow Windlifter managed to arrive before the county coroner was able to arrive on the scene.

Neither Maru nor Blade had had a chance to contact the Skycrane to give him the news which only added to their confusion when the large helicopter arrived and started to help himself to a mug of lukewarm coffee. When asked about how the helicopter had found out, Windlifter simply gave a shrug of his rotor blades.

“I knew you two would need help.” Windlifter gave a signature nonanswer. “So, I manage arrangements with the university to take three days of emergency leave. That should give the smokejumpers time to journey here and take over the death watch.”

Maru couldn’t help but let a groan slip through his lips at the mention of the smokejumpers. He hadn’t been so focused on just getting the necessary notifications done, that he hadn’t started notifying the long list of vehicles that would want to be notified of Cabbie’s passing in a timely matter.

“I have already been in touch with Avalanche and Dynamite.” Windlifter stated before Maru had a chance to ruminate too long on the magnitude of the job in front of him. “Avalanche has taken it upon himself to contact all current members of the Air Attack Team and the Fire Chiefs for the units that Cabbie has been loaned to during the past five years. Dynamite has pulled out her rolodex and started tracking down the former firefighters that Cabbie served with during his time at Piston Peak.”

Maru couldn’t help but let his mouth drop open a bit. Not only was Windlifter be uncharacteristically open with information, but the helicopter had also taken the initiative and organized the widespread dissemination of information. The mechanic was about to ask the helicopter who he was and what he had done with Windlifter, when the Superintendent managed to roll up on them and the answers to Maru’s burning questions were instantly answered.

“Windlifter.” Superintendent Jammer gave the helicopter a level, if tired, look in the eyes. “I am so glad you were able to make arrangements to be here. Is there anything paperwork that I need to send to the university to prove purpose of leave?”

“Not at this time.” The helicopter gave a shake of his rotors.

“Good.” Jammer looked introspective. “Good. How is the notification of the smokejumpers going?”

Maru almost opened his mouth to speak, but Windlifter luckily beat him to the punch. “I have been in contact with Avalanche and Dynamite. They are taking care of contacting the members of the Air Attack Team both past and present, and they should call the base this evening to give a report on their progress.”

* * *

With Windlifter keeping the deathwatch, and the Superintendent manning the phones. The wait for the coroner to arrive stretched into an unbearable eternity. Seconds ticked by like minutes, minutes stretched like hours, and if the vigil would have lasted over an hour, it would have certainly felt like an eternity. But as with everything, the end of the wait eventually came, and the thunder of an aircraft’s jet engines shattered the quiet of the mountain valley.

Superintendent Jammer was the first to greet the coroner as he debarked the aircraft. The ranger introduced Maru, explaining the mechanic had been the vehicle who called in the death. There were questions and answers, and the coroner spent 10 minutes in Cabbie’s hanger looking over the old plane and confirming what everyone already knew. Then coroner followed Jammer, Blade, and Maru up to Blade’s hanger to handle the last of the paperwork. Forms were signed, Cabbie’s tail number was formally stricken from the record, and an era formally ended.

To Maru it felt incredibly anti-climatic way to acknowledge a death, but he also knew that this was only the first step in what was going to be a complicated process of caring for what had been Cabbie’s mortal shell.


End file.
